Shells and Fishes - The Silk Scarf Print That Brings the Ocean to High Fashion
Shells and Fishes - The Silk Scarf Print That Brings the Ocean to High Fashion Shells and Fishes Printed Scarf, The Silk Scarf Print That Brings the Ocean to High Fashion Few printed textiles carry the poetic weight of the shells and fishes motif. It is a design language that has moved across centuries and continents, surfacing in the decorative arts of ancient Rome, the porcelain workshops of the Ming Dynasty, the hand-blocked cottons of eighteenth-century Provence, and eventually the great silk ateliers of Lyon and Como. The image of the sea — its creatures, its curved and spiraling architecture, its moods from pale aquamarine to deep indigo — has always attracted the designer's hand. On silk, more than on any other textile, it finds its most luminous and fitting home. The shells and fishes print as a recognizable fashion motif gained particular momentum in the 1950s and 1960s, when European couture houses began commissioning square silk scarves as wearable works of art. These we...